"I see. That's why you recorded my visit tonight. But I leave in less than an hour. You'd never be able to tell Commander Pritchard in time to make any difference, and he'd never come here to see...." Ninon laughed mirthlessly, and pressed buttons again. The screen changed, went blank for a moment, then figures appeared again. On the couch were she and a man, middle-aged, dignified in appearance, uniformed. Blane Pritchard, Commandant of Space Research. His arms were around her, and his face was buried in her hair. She let the recording run for a moment, then shut it off and turned up the lights. To Robert, she said, "I think Commander Pritchard would be here in five minutes if I called and told him that I have information which seriously affects the success of the flight." The young spaceman's face was white and stricken as he stared for long moments, wordless, at Ninon. Then in defeated tones he said, "You scheming witch! What do you want?" There was no time to gloat over her victory. That would come later. Right now minutes counted. She snatched up a cloak, pushed Robert out through the door and hurried him along the hall and out into the street where his car waited. "We must hurry," she said breathlessly. "We can get to the spaceship ahead of schedule, before your flight partner arrives, and be gone from Earth before anyone knows what is happening. I'll be with you, in his place." Robert did not offer to help her into the car, but got in first and waited until she closed the door behind her, then sped away from the curb and through the streets to the spaceport. Ninon said, "Tell me, Robert, isn't it true that if a clock recedes from Earth at the speed of light, and if we could watch it as it did so, it would still be running but it would never show later time?" The young man said gruffly, "Roughly so, according to theory." "And if the clock went away from Earth faster than the speed of light, wouldn't it run backwards?" The answer was curtly cautious. "It might appear to." "Then if people travel at the speed of light they won't get any older?" Robert flicked a curious glance at her. "If you could watch them from Earth they appear not to. But it's a matter of relativity...." Ninon rushed on. She had studied that book carefully. "And if people travel faster than light, a lot faster, they'll grow younger, won't they?" Robert said, "So that's what's in your mind." He busied himself with parking the car at the spaceport, then went on: "You want to go back in the past thirty years, and be a girl again. While I grow younger, too, into a boy, then a child, a baby, at last nothing...." "I'll try to be sorry for you, Robert."